


The Insanity of Ann McKay

by Dark Automaton (0Dark_Automaton0)



Category: Ben 10 Series
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alien Culture discussion, Basically anything I do, Discussion of Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, It's gonna be referenced, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, References To Homestuck, References to Tumblr, References to anime, Self-Insert, Teenagers, dimensional shenanigans, i did my best to make sure she isn't a mary sue, the mc is literally me with an alias
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-22
Updated: 2016-08-04
Packaged: 2018-05-22 16:49:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 10,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6087262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/0Dark_Automaton0/pseuds/Dark%20Automaton
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A young lady suddenly finds herself in the world of one of her favorite television shows since childhood.<br/>How does she react to this revelation?<br/>Turns out, not very well.</p>
<p>"It's like if Puella Magi Madoka Magica has no sense of self-awareness of how catastrophic their worlds are." ~TV Tropes</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Arrival

**Author's Note:**

> Yep, this is my first real self-insert. I had typed the whole damn thing over the course of this past week, so when I'm done typing up my most recent edition, there may be a slight hiatus.  
> Still, it's the most complete thing I've given my time to since 32 Pickup (which I need to "pickup" on, bad-um tss...), and I'm relatively proud of it.  
> So, without further ado, let's get on with my self-depreciation and self-torture!

She felt like she just woke up from a particularly restless sleep. She was drifting, her eyes half lidded and dull, and her gait was as if she had drunk half a bar under the table. It was when she bumped into a light post and collapsed onto the ground, unmoving, that someone called for help. As good Samaritans knelt by her side, keeping other pedestrians from running her over in the morning rush, she fell back into unconsciousness.

Hours later, she awoke wrapped up in something stiff, an IV in her arm, and various wires and tubes connected to her body. She blinked a few times and lifted her head, her mind still in a haze. What happened? She didn’t see any bandages, though she could feel the wrapping on her head, and all she was connected to were apparently monitoring equipment. She tried to raise an arm, but only to be impeded by the oxygen monitor on her finger.

Her throat felt like it was lined with sandpaper, and she coughed. Her voice came out raspy, “Aw crap, ow…” Her throat stung, and she coughed again. Soon enough she was having a full-blown coughing fit. She groaned some more, and relaxed her straining neck, letting her head plop back down onto the lumpy pillow. The whole place smelled like chemicals, and it wasn’t helping the dull ache.

It wasn’t long before a nurse came by and summoned the doctor. The man explained to her, in as gentle a voice as he could, that she had fainted from an unknown cause and had sustained a minor head injury during her fall. She tried to ask where she was, but her voice was so hoarse you’d think it was a mummy trying to speak instead.

Once a nurse had fetched her a glass of water, she tried again, clearing her throat, “Where am I?”

“Savannah Hospital, Bellwood.”

The girl didn’t recognize the location, so she tried again, “Um, which state?”

“Georgia.”

Okay. She sighed. At least she was in the USA. She had no idea what happened, but it was still good to know she was in relatively familiar lands. All she’d have to do is get back to Florida, and maybe see what happened to her that made her suddenly take a road trip hundreds of miles north without any memory. Then she remembered the town’s name.

Bellwood.

There can’t be any Bellwoods in Georgia, she checked! The only Bellwood she’s ever found was in Illinois, how the hell- Stop, stop it. This wasn’t the time to be a paranoid idiot, she reasoned, all she wanted was to get home.

The doctor asked for her name, and she snapped out of her reverie. She lied through her teeth, “Ann McKay.”

The doctor scribbled it down onto the papers on his board, nodding in response. Ann had no idea why she suddenly got the idea to lie to a doctor, but she had a feeling that even if they did find her family, something would go wrong. Even as the doctor left the room, assuring her that a nurse would bring her lunch in the next 30 minutes or so, she had this sickening feeling in her gut.

“Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”


	2. Newscast

She got to take a quick shower after the second checkup, returning her hair back to its natural coppery sheen. Ann had begun running her fingers through the thick curly locks, an old habit she’s retained from childhood. First matter of business, she decided, was to obtain access to a computer. Then, she could check and see whether it really was what she thought it was.

Later, she had asked for a computer, only to receive a big fat “no.” Thankfully, they at least put the TV on, and Ann didn’t know if that was better or worse.

There was a news story on. A man who looked like the weird gay lovechild between Stephen Colbert and JJ Jameson was pretending to be outraged about something. Ann could tell by the borderline constipated look on this face; this guy was about to do his viewers a magic trick and talk out of his ass. Then he announced himself as, “Will Harangue.”

She didn’t believe him. She couldn’t. Ann knew that name and as far as she knew there was nobody in their right mind that would have a name like that and get into a journalism career seriously. Anybody but that one character from a TV show. Then he drove the last nail in the coffin,

“Breaking news! The menace, Ben Tennyson, has committed another crime against our fair town!”

_Motherfucker._

An icy chill raced down her back, balling up in her stomach like someone just injected liquid nitrogen into her intestines. Ann gritted her teeth, and began to breathe harshly. The covers of the bed she sat on were bunched up in her fists, the knuckles going white. She began to whisper,

“Oh, no no no no no no no no nonononononononononononono…”

She knew her heartbeat was spiking; a nurse would come to check on her soon if she didn’t calm down. She couldn’t-

This was bad. This was really, really bad.

It was like falling into the world of Puella Madoka Magica, except these people don’t know what’s so wrong with their world. Alien invasions every month, plasma guns wielded by even the lowest of criminals, aliens crawling beneath the skin of the planet, and a savior that flipped from relatively normal teen to immature workaholic almost every other season. Ann believed wholeheartedly that she was, indeed, very fucked.


	3. Freaking Out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A relatively short chapter. Not much actually going on here. Still, more to come later!

A nurse came by shortly after Ann’s panic attack, and recognizing the patient’s anxiety, had tried making her more comfortable. A few more cups of water, and a visit from the doctor, and Ann had managed to regain her cool.

She couldn’t let them know. At best, they’d hand her over to the Plumbers or whatever authority was in charge of extradimensional phenomena. At worst, she’d be institutionalized. Either outcome was not what she imagined to be a “good time.” In any case, she needed to figure out how to get past the medical bills, or the fact that she probably didn’t exist at all in this universe.

She asked to call her home phone number, only to receive an error message. The same happened when she tried her mother’s cellphone, her sister’s cellphone, and essentially every number she knew. She stiffly gave the phone back to the nurse, giving a strained, “thank you” in response. Yeah, this wasn’t going to go well, was it?

By all means, she was homeless. In a world frequented by aliens and humans with deadly weapons. Ann really didn’t want to consort with the likes of Argit, goddamn him to hell and back, but otherwise she would probably be sent to a foster home or something. She literally had nowhere to go.

She shook herself roughly, “No, stop that. This isn’t going to get you anywhere. There’s only one person who might help me.”

Professor Paradox. The man who walks in time, and has the highest chance of at the very least understanding her dilemma. After all, he was displaced in time, she was displaced in space; two sides of the same coin. Surely he could help her.


	4. Internet!

They discharged her to a temporary home in the outskirts of the town. There wasn’t a trace of any “Ann McKay” girls or any names she had given them, and with no other alternatives and no family, she was there. Ann didn’t blame any of the staff. It was just their job, and she was just a minor with no legal identity. Of course she’d wind up there.

Didn’t mean she wasn’t pissed.

_“Fuck my life,”_ she thought bitterly, standing in the room where she was intended to stay until she either grew up or got adopted. This was probably the smallest room in the home; smaller than the one she had back home. She could still remember the lavender walls, the clutter of miscellaneous trash piled up into a makeshift table, the unmade bunkbed…

She threw herself onto the unoccupied bed, and allowed herself to cry silently. She wasn’t a very pretty crier. Her eyes were red and puffy, her face was leaking all sorts of fluids, and the excess mucus forming was going to be hell for her throat later. But it was quiet. Barely a sound could be heard outside of the steady hum of the AC.

Ann later heard the other girl in the room enter, and was thankful that she was ignored. She must not have been the first sobbing teen to enter the place, or probably was and the other one didn’t know how to react. Either way, it didn’t matter. She was pretty much alone, one way or another.

It was later that she would see her roommate: a girl of probably twelve years, looking no worse for wear than Ann was. The girl introduced herself as “Lucia” to which Ann exchanged her alias. She didn’t want to acknowledge the irony behind the word’s pronunciation. Ann didn’t feel like telling her story, and Lucia didn’t seem to want to tell hers. They reached a silent agreement, “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”

The first thing Ann wanted was access to some sort of computer. Back home, her laptop provided not only entertainment, but also a portion of her education and a place to relax and let her creative juices flow uninterrupted. She had managed to get a turn on one of the several computers in the main meeting room; not quite a living room nor a computer room.

She gave a small grin when she found Tumblr. From there, she branched out and found that many of her favorite franchises still existed, albeit a few were under different names. At least some things were right.

Stirring from the distraction, she looked up her own username. Nothing. She looked up the usernames of some of her friends from school, and got no results. There were a few users she did recognize, but they were all just a little different. Deo didn’t update nearly as much, Cameron seemed to update even more, and Cym seemed to reblog a lot more Yellow Pearl stuff than Blue. Weird.

She knew how stupid it’d be to look up her own name. The hospital didn’t find anything, and quite frankly every time she tried back home she kept getting links to gardening sites about some sort of bush. A literal bush, not the lady parts.

Either way, it seems that besides her nonexistence and the minor differences, the world of Ben 10 wasn’t that much different than in real life. Ann was having a hard time thinking of this as not real. Then she heard the bang.


	5. Oh no not again

It was very loud, but apparently very distant. Ann shot up from the desk chair and headed for the nearest window. Outside, amongst the distant skyscrapers and concrete buildings, were at least three figures. One was massive, several limbs swinging at another slightly smaller one, and a much smaller figure pointing what could only be some kind of rifle at the fighting pair.

The lady of the house briefly glanced outside, at the fight, and dismissed it, “You’ll get used to it, hon.”

Ann’s face most certainly didn’t indicate it. Instead, she drew in a sharp breath, and slid down to the floor. Her mind was going over a singular phrase, _“It’s him, it’s him, it’s him, its him its him itshimitshimitshim…”_

It took Lucia and the headmistress’ best efforts to relocate Ann back to her room, after another child had complained about her huddled position in front of the window blocking the computer’s access. Ann cursed at him quite violently for that, which only changed the lady of the house’s concerned look into a stern one. Ann refused to apologize, even though inside she could tell that she had overstepped some boundaries.

_“Not that anyone cares,”_ a treacherous part of her mind whispered, _“They’re just dealing with your bullshit because you’ve got no family for them to shove you on to. They’re gone, and they’re not coming to get you.”_

She screamed. She kicked, she cried, she tore at her hair, and dug her nails into her left arm. It was an unpleasant old habit from when she was young; back when she first learned that hurting others was wrong but had yet to understand that the same applied to herself. She wanted this whole world to burn in the hell that spawned it, and to give her back her old one.

She was well aware that she was having a tantrum, but goddammit she just lost literally her whole world, and all she got was a tiny shared room at a foster home in a city that could blow up or get invaded at any minute.

Ann felt her arms being held against the bed, and she opened her tear-stained eyes. Nurses. Someone must have called the hospital. Her face twisted into an angry snarl, “Let go of me!”

“Miss, please, calm down,” one of the nurses, a burly man obviously sent to deal with a dangerous patient, tried to placate her. Her response was to start screaming, “Let me go! Leave me alone! PLEASE!”


	6. Conversation

She was dragged to the Savannah Medical Center’s psychiatric ward kicking and screaming.

In hindsight, when she was released a week later, she probably should have just gone in to her bedroom and locked herself in there until she calmed down. Being monitored 24/7 and fed nothing but medicated hospital food was not her idea of having fun while inside the universe of one of her favorite TV shows. Yes, Ann absolutely loved the Ben 10 series in all its sci-fi glory. It was kind of like really liking Attack on Titan; you love the series but you certainly wouldn’t want to actually live in the setting.

For the next two weeks, anyhow, that was exactly what she did. Whenever she heard a bang, a crash, or shots fired, she would lock herself in her room until it just went away. Of course, someone was going to notice her odd behavior eventually.

“Okay, not to sound insensitive or anything, but what the hell is wrong with you?” Lucia had asked one day, not so sensitively, “You lock yourself in our room every time you hear a crime happen, even if it’s super far away.”

“That’s none of your concern,” Ann said, her voice strained with either anger or pain, or maybe both. Lucia didn’t pick it up,

“Yes it is! I live in this room too, and they had to send you to the looney bin for a week! They’re talking about sending you to an institution or something. Of course I’m going to be at least a little bit worried.”

“Fine, fine, fine…” Ann sighed, “I doubt you’d believe me if I told you the whole story- “

“Bullshit.”

“But, I can tell you this much: it involves interdimensional shenanigans of Wizard of Oz proportions, and I’ve got no goddamned ruby slippers to send me home.”

“You’re from another dimension?” Lucia said, her blue eyes widening and her face going into a cross between confusion and surprise, “You don’t look like a tentacle being outside of my perception.”

“My homeworld isn’t that different from here,” Ann rolled her eyes, crossing her arms, “The biggest difference is one thing: No aliens.”

“Oh,” Lucia said, before it sunk in, “Ooohhh, so that’s why you freaked out when you saw that rooftop battle! You’ve never seen one have you?”

“Only on cartoons,” Ann laughed bitterly, “I had no idea aliens could be so… Real.”

“The cartoons have something to do with it, don’t they?”

Well Ann wasn’t expecting that, and her guard suddenly fled, “What?!”

Lucia just shrugged, “I’m just saying, you wouldn’t have laughed like that unless it had something to do with it. So, what, is there some sort of cartoon about Ben Tennyson or something in your home dimension or whatever?”

Ann’s face at that moment could only be surmised in the form of the emoji: 0_0

“Uh,” she made her very best efforts not to give it away, “No?”

“Holy crap, there is!” Lucia seemed a lot happier about it than Ann was, “That is so cool!”

“Know any anime?” Ann asked out of the blue, “Like, really dark anime?”

“Huh? You mean, like Berserk?” Lucia said, growing confused.

“Yeah, good choice,” Ann said, wringing her hands in her lap, “Now, imagine you were suddenly teleported to Berserk’s world.”

Lucia shuddered, “I’d rather not.”

“Exactly. That’s kind of what I feel about living here.”

“What? Why?” Lucia almost took offense to Ann’s comment, “What’s so wrong with here?”

“Because any minute now, the world can be destroyed, and hardly any galactic authority would give two shits about it,” Ann said bluntly. It was like a pressurized valve being loosened too much, or maybe a dam breaking. She went on,

“Holy fuck there’s a lot wrong here! Aliens had suddenly began inhabiting our planet without us knowing, common criminals are getting their grubby paws on plasma weapons, alien criminals are using our planet as common grounds for illegal WMD trading, and all the sorts of crap that gravitates towards the Omnitrix!”

“Woah, there. Ease on the breaks there,” Lucia said, placing a steadying hand on the now hyperventilating older girl. A brief silence filled the room, with the two girls sitting on the bed in silent agreement. Lucia spoke quietly,

“Y’know, you haven’t told me much about your world, right?”

“Oh, it kind of sucked too,” Ann said all too casually, “The biggest difference was that most of it wasn’t immediate, and you could avoid most of the bad stuff by gravitating towards the right places. Here, no amount of moving will save you from omnicidal or genocidal maniacs.”

“Well, shit,” Lucia said, no less casually. A brief, now awkward, silence followed.

“Moirails?”

“Moirails.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's the final chapter for now; so far I have nothing else typed up for this. If you wish, this can be Ending 1, since from here onward things might get weird... Let's just say it involves Space Shenanigans, and leave it that way.


	7. Afternoon Discussion

“So, how exactly old are you?” Ann asked, sitting on her own bed as Lucia folded laundry for the both of them. The younger girl shrugged, “Fourteen and a half. I’m just small.”

“I see,” Ann said, more to fill the silence than anything else, “So, are there any emergency protocols to dealing with alien threats around here?”

“If the threats get within a few blocks of here, we usually pick up anything we need and hideout in the next town over.”

“What if an alien kid winds up here?”

“Uh, I kinda doubt that,” Lucia chuckled, “I don’t think the Plumbers would want us really mixing at this stage. You said it yourself, we are pretty low on the food chain in their politics.”

Ann grinned, perhaps a little too maliciously, “Heheheh, I found it pretty ironic, back when I was the audience. Like, dramatic irony. Humans are one of the very few species out there that is at the top of their own food chain without help from aliens.”

“Really? Cool.”

“Yep. I bet we could totally rule these fuckers,” Ann said, before admitting, “I have always imagined what it would be like to be an intergalactic empress.”

“Don’t we all?” Lucia said genially, “Like, Her Imperious Condescension levels of empress, or Padme?”

“Meh, somewhere in between,” Ann replied, putting a little more thought into it, “Like, I’d totally want to give off the HIC style and awesomeness, but I doubt I could really pull off being such a massive douchewaffle, y’know?”

“You don’t seem the type. Hey, how else did people portray Mr. Tennyson in your world?”

“Well, there was a Tumblr fanbase, a TV Tropes page, and some other stuff. I think this one country tried to do a spin-off for his cousin Gwen at some point…”

Ann did her best to relay as much about her world as she could. It was oddly comforting, like listening to a song your parents played in the car nearly nonstop during road-trips. She couldn’t tell how much Lucia had wanted to know, though, and she worried quietly that she might just be annoying.

Lucia, meanwhile, had loved hearing Ann’s stories. She didn’t believe them entirely; no, she just thought that Ann was either batshit insane, or possibly some kind of latent psychic. Come on, there were kids like Lucky Girl and her shapeshifting boyfriend in her world, who knew what else could suddenly rise from the gene pool?

Still, Ann seemed to really appreciate being able to vent to someone. Insane or not, Lucia knew that whatever separated Ann from her family had to have been something big. The girl looked as if she’d shatter without some kind of support to lean on. Lucia didn’t want to jump to conclusions, but sometimes… weird things would happen around Ann. Little things.

Laundry that the older girl had put into the dryer would suddenly be found in the washer. Lucia swore she saw Ann watching static on TV, claiming she was watching the news. She would make a weird face with certain stimuli, which Lucia had counted down as including peacocks, vans, certain shades of blue and green, Cartoon Network, and other things. Ann knew some surprisingly detailed stuff about certain people, including Ben Tennyson, though she would suddenly halt in the middle of conversation if she realized it.

Yeah, Lucia had decided she wouldn’t rule out the psychic thing until somebody proved her wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've taken the "16 Personality Types" test before, and it called me "The Debater." Figures, since both me and Annie share a tendency for bouncing ideas off of things.


	8. Paranoia

It was when Lucia caught Ann taking apart a pair of scissors that she began to _really_   worry. According to her possibly mental friend, “I’m an anomaly, and you know what happens to anomalies in cartoons? They get one or more of three things: to become the damsel of distress, a new supervillain, or a chump that the hero may or may not have to kill in order to save the world. I certainly don’t want to fall into those categories.”

Ann had apparently looked up legal methods of self-defense online. Suddenly all the odd shopping trips with their meager allowances made a lot more sense. Unlike most girls Lucia knew, Ann was completely uninterested in a new phone, headphones, or anything relatively normal. All the girl ever got was for a purpose, and that was something Lucia did not deny was rather scary.

It didn’t help that the older girl had begun to visibly “glitch out,” as Lucia had put it. One minute, Ann was at the computer, and a moment later she’d be in their room, freaking out. No in-between, just in one place and then another. No flash of light or puff of smoke, either. It was a bit like a lagging video, suddenly skipping to the part its audio is supposed to be after staying at one screen for several minutes. Lucia couldn’t find a logical way to explain it, and Ann didn’t seem to have any answers either.

“Okay, we need to do something about this, Ann,” Lucia said to her friend of, perhaps, two months. Ann was testing out the usability of her metal waterbottle as a makeshift baton, responding without looking at her,

“Yeah, I don’t think the Internet has any resources to sudden teleportation attacks. You don’t think the Extranet has anything about that?”

“No! That’s not the point!” Lucia strained, trying not to shout so late in the afternoon, “I mean we need to get you help. Real help, not video tutorials.”

Ann put down the bottle, and slumped down on her bed, “What am I supposed to do? Call the space police?”

“I don’t know, maybe! What if you wind up teleporting into a wall or something?”

“It’s not that bad…”

“You’re just scared that you’ll have to explain to a bunch of aliens that you’re a fourth wall viewer.”

“Rightfully so! They’d never believe me.”

Lucia scoffed, sitting on her own bed, “Look, it’s worth a shot. If you end up teleporting into their HQ, they might go on the offensive, but if you just call to report an anomaly, just do that! If they ask you questions, tell them the truth.”

“I’m a girl from another universe with no aliens and where Ben 10 is a children’s cartoon. How the fuck am I supposed to pull that off?”

“You tell them things most people here don’t know. You told me almost all about Ben Tennyson, how weird his family is, and the people he knows. You’ll figure something out.”

Ann looked at her friend, hesitant, “But… What if they lock me up for being an interdimensional threat or something?”

Lucia reached over, and held her hand on Ann’s shoulder. The older girl barely tolerated any contact beyond that from anybody, but she let her. “You’ll do fine, OK? Whatever happens, happens.”

Ann gave a heavy sigh, pouting like the teen she was, “Aaaaahh, fine! But if they do wind up killing me for being a threat to the universe, you better keep my Tumblr churning out shitty doodles, you hear me?!”

Lucia smiled, “I hear you.”


	9. The Message

She had absolutely no idea how to carry this out. Ann held the phone in her hand, the trembling feeling in her gut not letting up any no matter how much she wrung the end of her shirt. She stammered to herself,

“Take it easy,” she said her own name, “It’s just a phone call. Suspicious activity, needs investigators, just leave a message.”

She dialed, only to immediately hand up. She put the phone on the table, her arms shaking. Even her voice shook, “Goddammit,” she said her name, “you can’t even call in a fucking report. Why didn’t you freeze up when you told Lucy?!”

She sighed, and decided to go for Plan B: email.

_To: Bellwood Plumber’s Station  
From: Ann M._

_I am sending this message in order to report some interdimensional (or rather, inter-universal) phenomena involving myself. To get to the important parts, I am not from this universe. I come from a universe that has not had any public contact with aliens, but circumstances allowed for me to obtain some basic information of this universe. I know of Ben Tennyson, many of his connections, a few things about his enemies, and some information regarding aliens he has had direct contact with. I am also aware of the eight or so alternate Omnitrix wielders (I believe your Ben acts as a mentor to one of them)._

_To try and alleviate the disbelief, ask Ben about his fear of peacocks._

_Regardless, my home universe doesn’t have an Omnitrix, as far as I know. Hell, we probably don’t even have Plumbers. I honesty have no idea how to get back home, all attempts to find my family or any alternate versions of them have proven fruitless, and I have nobody to count on to fix this. Here’s a list of phenomena that I have experienced, and many of the people I currently take shelter with have witnessed:_

_* Unpredictable teleportation (possibly what got me here in the first place)._

_* Actions of mine to be suddenly undone or erased._

_* Abnormal reactions towards electrical devices (this has the most witnesses; apparently I stare at a blank screen and listen to nothing but static when observed)._

_If you choose to ignore this email and dismiss it as a prank, I don’t blame you, but the consequences will be both mine and yours to bear. I don’t know if my condition will get better or worse, and quite frankly, I’m running out of options. I know I am an anomaly, and there are only so many ways this can go: I become a villain that goes to inhuman lengths just to go home (or gets enslaved by the real villains for new abilities or something), I get helped out and sent on my merry way as part of a one-off, I become some minor character’s love-interest (HA!), or I get killed by either you guys (trying to save the fabric of space-time or whatever) or by the bad guys (who think me a threat to their operations)._

_Either way, I’m not just going to sit there and take it. It took my roommate several tries to get me to tell you, and now I can at least tell you I tried. If you see me going on a Bec Noir-esque rampage across Bellwood, don’t say I didn’t warn you._

_\- Ann M._

“This is complete and utter shit,” Ann thought to herself, reading over the email, “What the fuck did I just write? Oh well, the garbage will have to do.”

She clicked the Send button, immediately regretting it a second later, “OH CRAP, WHAT IF THEY REPLY?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have had to deal with authorities over things I've accidentally done before, and if there's anything I learned from that experience, it's that I can't handle talking to them in person. Even when I know I'm in no trouble, I freak the fuck out. Ann is no different in that regard, except there's a higher chance that she might die. Not fun for her.


	10. The cops show up

“So, did you call them?”

“I sent them an email.”

“So you went the easy route. Social anxiety bugging you?”

“Dude, how am I supposed to act around aliens? What if an alien picked up, and got offended by my blubbering?”

“What if they reply to your email like a normal and civilized person, and try to help you?”

“Oh now you’re just being – “ Ann was interrupted by a knock on their door. The girl immediately tensed up, shoulders hunched and fingers clenching the sheets. The older girl looked to Lucia, “Could you… get that?”

Lucia nodded, and opened the door, letting Ann run to the closet. On the other side were two people in white armor: a human woman and some sort of fish-like alien. Lucia stepped back in surprise, inadvertently letting the two in. The woman spoke up first,

“Hello, I’m officer Molly Gunther, local Plumbers department. This is Magister Patelliday,” the fish-man waved, “Are you Miss Ann McKay?”

“Uh, no,” Lucia stuttered, blurting out, “She’s in the closet.”

“Fuck!” the muffled cry of the older girl, startling Patelliday, “What did she just say?”

“Nothing!” came the strained reply, Ann swinging open the closet door and slipping on a shoebox she left in there a while back, “Gah!”

“Easy there,” Gunther said, grabbing the girl’s upper arm to steady her. Ann tensed up automatically, clamping her jaw shut. The human, now stable, stepped over to a clear spot, tersely saying, “Would you mind… uh, letting go?”

Gunther obliged, noting the girl’s odd reflex, and asked, “So, I’m assuming that you’re the girl who sent that email?”

“Uh, yeah,” Ann said, looking very nervous. Though, not in the liar’s sense. She wasn’t making any attempts at eye contact, or backpedaling. Molly also noted how she apparently refused to look at Patelliday directly, instead opting to inspect him through the mirror on the small vanity opposite of the door. Magister Patelliday didn’t seem to react to the girl’s awkward behavior, “Nice to meet you, miss. Now, mind giving us an explanation for that message?”

“So, um,” the girl started, strained, “I gave a lot of info with that message. I don’t know how I got here, outside of it probably having something to do with the teleportation thing. I just woke up at the Savannah hospital up here, and when I tried finding my family, they were nowhere to be found.”

Ann’s voice shook as she continued, “Then I saw the broadcast. And then the fight… And then I realized where I was, and I… freaked out a little. I tried looking up my name – my _real_ name – but I got nothing, and I tried my mom’s and my dad’s and my brothers and sister… It’s as if they all vanished. A-and now…”

She trailed off, trembling, and took a seat on the bed. The three other people in the room watched with surprise as the girl began to break down, face turning red and tear streaming down her face. Magister Patelliday, concerned, put a hand onto the poor girl’s shoulder. She recoiled and shrieked, “DON’T – “

Then, she was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you guys wanted canons, so I gave you canons. What? You thought I'd bring in Ben now? He's got better things to do than investigate a little email.


	11. Departure

Like a fart in the wind, Ann had disappeared right in the middle of her sentence. Just as the headmistress had told them, shortly before they visited her,

“The kid’s kind of jumpy. Scarcely talks about her personal life, very good learner, dependable for small chores, nothing out of the ordinary for the kind of people that land here. Though, it was when I actually saw the activity with my own two eyes that I really questioned her.

“She’d wind up in the craziest places, and since most private rooms here are locked by keys, there’s no sensible way for her to have gotten there.”

They found her five minutes later screaming on the rooftop, “LUCIAAAAAAAA!!!”

Molly had to be the one to get the girl off the roof, with the help of some of the older kids. Ann had quite vehemently refused to approach when Patelliday tried to pick her up on one of the hovering vehicles they arrived with. The two Plumbers exchanged a knowing glance; the kid probably never saw an alien in person before.

Not exactly something Molly blamed Ann for, she had a pretty similar freakout when she first met the Plumbers, but the girl had uncontrollable abilities. If the information given in the email was true as well, that could mean a lot of things: she could be used against them, she could be hunted down as a threat, and she could be in danger of going into some sort of power meltdown. If they were to help this outsider, then she would have to get more accustomed to dealing with nonhumans.

~~~

Ann was officially taken into Plumber custody once the full extent of her “legal nonexistence,” as she termed it, was realized. Molly was more than a little shocked when the girl merely exchanged usernames for social media and a light hug to her friend. The woman asked about it on the way to the headquarters,

“You seemed weirdly calm about having to leave your friend behind.”

Ann merely gave a weary sigh, and mumbled, “It nev…”

“It never what?”

“It never lasts.”

“Oh come on, surely you’ve kept friends fro- oh, right,” Molly winced, realizing what she just said. Ann chuckled bitterly,

“Yeah, even there, it never lasted. I’m socially stunted beyond repair. Never learned to make friends, and probably never will. I’ve accepted it.”

“Now, don’t say that.”

“What’s the point?” the girl said, smiling but not sounding like it, “Literally the only people I can tell this to are you guys, and the only reason you believe me is because I teleported in an unintentionally racist freakout.”

“I said I didn’t mind!” Magister Patelliday said from the back seat. Ann chuckled, “Well I do. I don’t know what might happen if I touched an alien. Somebody might get sick from interdimensional viruses, or I may overstep a cultural boundary or something.”

“The last one’s not a problem if you’re talking to an alien around here, kid,” Molly assured, “The whole process of getting off your planet involves having to have some level of cultural sensitivity. Just be polite, and you’ll do fine.”

“Though, that ‘interdimensional viruses’ problem we might have to check in to,” Patelliday said, chuckling a little nervously, and Molly brushed it off,

“The girl’s been in contact with other humans for at least a couple months; if she were infectious with anything, we would have heard about it.”

Ann giggled, itching the back of her head. This was going to be a long trip; she could feel it.


	12. Settling in

Ann had no idea how she was going to meet him. She expected to, obviously; this was like some sort of twisted self-insert if the author cloned themselves and stuck the poor result into another dimension. She was weird, and if there was anything that attracted a Tennyson, it was weirdness.

She was caught off guard when they simply walked past him and a certain blue fuzzy guy on their way to her… quarters. The boy looked a lot scrawnier than she had expected, though she refused to look much further than that. Ann already had reservations against making inappropriate gestures, and eyeing up a dude might give the wrong signals.

Sadly, he did notice, and stopped Ann’s escorts in their tracks,

“Who’s this?”

Ann tensed up and bit her lips shut, looking everywhere but at Ben. She settled her gaze at her shoes, as Molly spoke for her,

“This is Ann. She’s not from around here, and we’re just helping her get situated while we try to find a way to send her home.”

“Is she not a human?” Rook asked, not threatening so much as cautiously curious. He sounded almost exactly like he did in the show, Ann silently noted. She wondered briefly about whether or not the voice actors still exist here, though she brushed it off quickly.

“She sure is,” Magister Patelliday said, raising a hand to pat her shoulder, stopping, then letting it fall back to his side, “She’s just not from around here.”

“Oh,” Ben said, realization lighting up his face, “She’s from another dimension? Why didn’t you say so? I bet it must be pretty different there.”

He began talking directly at the quiet girl now, “Hey, what’s the me from your universe like? Is he one of those bad Bens?”

“You don’t exist,” Ann said flatly, looking up and all but glaring at Ben, “There are no aliens, no Omnitrix, no Plumbers, no nothing. Just us humans and our little self-destructing sandbox.”

Ben reeled back a little, eyes blown wide, “Okay, yeesh. Touchy.”

“I haven’t seen my family in months, and I am in a universe where my homeplanet is in nigh-constant danger from apathetic or sadistic aliens. ‘Touchy’ shouldn’t be the first word to come to mind.”

The blue-furred alien stepped between the two for a brief moment, looking at Ann with an unreadable expression, “Come on, Ben. We have patrol to do.”

“Alright, alright,” Ben said, before asking Patelliday, “Let me know how it goes, later, alright?”

Patelliday nodded, and the three waited for Rook to usher Ben out of the hall. He turned to Ann, “You might want to tone it down a little. The boy doesn’t really take that kind of stuff very well.”

She shrugged, saying, “I was telling the truth; he’d learn it sooner or later, and I’m not wasting everyone’s time with him trying to solve me like a puzzle.”

The magisters looked at her with the same unreadable expression Rook gave her. Ann wasn’t much the type to read emotions, since she often assumed they could be easily faked. It was maybe fifteen minutes of walking down the sterile headquarters’ halls before they got to the room. Molly keyed a password into a room nearby,

“This is where you’ll be staying for now until we either find a way to send you back or reach legal adulthood and are able to get a place of your own.”

“Thanks.”

The room was the same green and grey of the rest of the complex. It had all the necessities, a bed, a desk, a chair, a cabinet, a basic phone, and a computer. It was… satisfactory, for now. Ann sat down on the bed, and began unpacking without a word.

The magisters left the girl to herself, Molly calling behind her, “Our numbers are on the computer if you need us for anything. The password in and out of your room is on there too, and we’ll let you get settled. Dinner’s at six, so when it comes around call me and I’ll pick you up. Okay?”

“Okay.”


	13. Confrontation

It didn’t take very long for them to realize how odd Ann acted. Most media involving human teenagers claimed they were energetic, emotional, and very social. However, the odd little anomaly that they housed had a tendency to lock herself in her room for hours at a time, often taking long walks in the winding base’s halls. On such walks, it wasn’t unusual for her to slip away from most contact with… anybody, really.

She was paranoid, too. Ben, who she had been making a point to avoid, had had enough. It was during one of her long rounds of pacing in the hall that he made the confrontation. She froze up the moment she saw him, and he could tell through the skin of her bottom lip that she was biting the inside. She was hiding something.

He started casually, “Hey, uh, nice weather we’re having.”

“We’re underground,” Ann said, her voice being even more flat and monotone than he expected. It was almost funny, he had to ask,

“Do you always talk like that?”

“Like what?” There it was again.

“You talk like a robot, dude. Do you ever emote?”

“I emote plenty,” she shot back, though still about as toneless as before. She faked a grin to try and make her point, but to Ben, it looked more like she was just baring her teeth. At this point, she’s started fidgeting. He wondered if she was actually used to conversation, if she was getting so twitchy so soon.

“Uh, are you okay?”

“I am in a dimension with aliens and criminals hooked up with alien technology, and on my homeplanet the worst we had was racist presidential candidates; you tell me.”

Now there’s a tone, and it was harsh. It sounded like someone was gritting their teeth while dealing with an obnoxious customer. Plus, he just got confirmation she wasn’t from around here. The human boy leaned against the wall, trying not to seem too threatening but while making sure she wouldn’t just run off. He had no idea how people from her “homeplanet” or “home-dimension” responded to casual interrogation. He asked another burning question,

“Well, if you’re so foreign, are a human?”

“At this point I have no fucking clue.”

He wasn’t sure how to respond to that, but as long as they were playing 20 Questions, he might as well get his money’s worth, “Aren’t you going to ask me anything?”

“I know pretty much everything there is to know about you,” she said, as if she were talking about yesterday’s forecast, “Ben Kirby Tennyson, raised in a nuclear family by Sandra and Carl Tennyson (I think that’s the names), went on a camping trip with some members of your extended family, blah blah blah…”

She waved her hand as if shooing away a fly, as Ben’s mouth gaped, “You don’t like peacocks, you have an unhealthy obsession with smoothies and chili fries that somehow carried on to your accidental clone, you nearly had a romance with a chick whose DNA is based off of yours, you can’t keep a girlfriend for much longer than maybe a few months – “

“Okay, now that’s just pushing the envelope!” Ben yelled defensively, and the weird girl chuckled at his expression,

“Hey, it’s true isn’t it?”

He didn’t want to think of the implications of that. As he thought of his next question, she took a coppery curl of hair and began twirling it around her finger. She leaned against the opposite wall herself, getting comfortable,

“Sorry about being so blunt, but I’m not some little fangirl who’s gonna pine for your affection and lie to you for it. I’ve seen these scenarios play out before, and they almost never end well, if they are even remotely in character.”

“How is that?” Ben asked, not quite understanding. Ann gave a shrug, and said quietly,

“Well, if anybody’s got to know the whole truth, I guess you should be one of them.”

“Wait a minute, ‘whole truth’?” Ben pressed, and Ann continued a bit louder than before,

“You know how you’ve got those stupid radio shows in the extranet about you?”

Ben nodded in response, and Ann went on, “Well, imagine another world. One with no aliens, that we knew of, no mystical beings, and none of all that nonsensical false science that the likes of Animo gets involved with. Our only access to that sort of thing is through media. Movies, television, comic books, regular books, cartoons…

“You were in a kid’s cartoon. ‘Ben 10’ was the name. It got four different shows taking place in what was supposed to be a singular linear timeline, and a straight up reboot was in the making last time I was there. Unlike the stupid shit the alien media vultures spoonfeed Rook Ben, this stuff was actually accurate.”

Ben listened with rapt attention, almost not believing what he was hearing. An accurate Ben 10 television series? Somebody better pinch him, he thought he was dreaming.

“Naturally, when I got here, it wasn’t of my free will. I don’t even know how the hell I got here, but I kind of doubt I can go back. I know the kind of shit that goes on here, and unlike your people, I’m not too happy about it. The moment I saw that godawful lovechild of Stephen Colbert and JJ Jameson on the TV screaming your name, I knew I was in deep shit.”

Ben giggled at the last statement, and the coiled up tension in Ann’s shoulders relaxed as she joined in the chucklefest. Clearing her throat with a rather gross wetness to it, she clarified,

“There’s a lot of things wrong here; there are only so many Plumbers you can stick on a planet without getting civil rights activists up in arms, but that won’t stop someone seriously dangerous from getting their paws on, say, an alien gun? How many people can you kill with just one little plasma rifle? Unless the Plumbers are also helping with teaching medical personnel how to treat those kinds of burns, us little folks are in serious trouble.”

Her tone sobered by then, nails digging into the sleeves of her blouse, “In hindsight, my homeworld wasn’t much better, but at least you knew what to expect. But with aliens, things just get more complicated. I can come up with a whole list of ways even your buddies in the Plumber’s Helpers can kill little old me with their bare hands – “

“Now, now, I kind of doubt Helen could hurt you – “

“Kineceleran claws are fucking sharp, last time I checked. Also, speed plus sharp ass claws equal twenty stab wounds in under thirty seconds. I’d be dead before I fucking blinked. I guess I can see how Cooper couldn’t hurt me _immediately_ , but he’s a technopath, he’d find a way…”

Ben didn’t really enjoy the fact that this girl, who was supposed to be a stranger, knew so much about his friends. Knowing about him, he wasn’t totally against; he was a celebrity, he was used to the attention. But the cold way this chick analyzed his friends, nevertheless _how easily they could kill a human_ … It just rubbed him the wrong way.

“Dude, you okay?”

Now it was her asking him if he was okay. Ben gave a heavy sigh, trying to alleviate the lead in his chest, “Yeah, I’m fine. You need a therapist.”

“Only if you get one too,” she shot right back, “God knows you need one.”

“Ben! Where are you?” the two heard a very familiar voice call out form one side of the hall. Ben called back, “Over here, Rook, I was just talking to – “

Ben had turned to find the hall empty of weird ginger chicks. What the hell? He was just talking to her…

Rook ran up to meet him, looking down the hall at where Ben was staring, “Who were you talking to?”

“Uh, right,” Ben said awkwardly, scratching the back of his head, “That weird chick who was having the breakdown earlier. She was just here a second ago…”

“Oh,” Rook said, waving it off, “Ann McKay, the interdimensional anomaly. Magister Patelliday said something about her ‘blinking out when she gets jittery.’ Did you scare her?”

“What, no!” Ben said defensively, rolling the new information in his mind. Was she really that nervous when they were talking? Maybe she didn’t want to talk to Rook so soon. Ben continued,

“Yeah, we were just talking. She knows more about me than most of the paparazzi does, and that’s a lot. She never said anything about _teleportation_.”

Rook shrugged, and said, “Well, we can always speak with her another time. Magister Patelliday told me to give the girl some distance if she seemed too nervous to talk. They are thinking of scheduling a psychologist for her behavior, and probably even more doctors with how she takes care of herself…”

Ben waved off the idea, “Naw, she just needs to get herself some good friends! I mean, I have plenty of friends, and I’m just fine!”

Rook caught the twitch of Ben’s jaw, and rolled his eyes, “Sure you do not.”

Yet he conceded, “Though, you are not wrong. Should we schedule a meeting?”

Ben crossed his arms, “I don’t think she’d accept that. Plus, I was lucky to get a day off this time. _We_ are too busy for that. However, I think I know a bunch she could stand to get to know a little better…”


	14. Not so Deadly

Ann was pacing again, now in what she believed to be a more secluded part of the base. She was trying to piece things together, now that her situation had momentarily stabilized. Most of her time at the shelter was spent screwing around on the Internet to try and gain a futile sense of normality, but it proved itself useless. Now, since she honestly did not trust the Extranet service to be unmonitored, she had nothing to do but think.

She tried thinking back to the last time she was at her home. It was some time in the spring or early summer; she still had school that she vaguely remembered. She remembered going to bed around her normal time, and tossing and turning until she actually fell asleep. Then… That part was the mystery.

The doctors claimed she’d been found unconscious by a concerned bystander. He’d left as soon as he found out she was in good hands. Her collapse was out of sight of security cameras, and on an out of the way street lined with small businesses that were well past closing time. No witnesses claimed to see her enter the street, and the security monitors on the ends of the street hadn’t detected her.

Very suspicious.

No signs of foul play; the only injury she had was a bruise and scrape from where she fell. She let a hand run up to the line where her hair met her scalp, opposite to the part. It had left a faint scar, leaving the skin there smooth and paler than the rest of her. She shuddered with a little disgust, and pulled away. The hair fell back into place to cover the blemish, and she silently hoped it would stay. Something to remind her where she really belonged.

Still, she fell back into pace, she must figure out how she got there. She had a few theories, mainly common tropes from previous fan works she had read before. Intergalactic forces with a twisted sense of humor, trans-dimensional hybridization, X-Men levels of superhuman mutation, demonic ritual, and more. Whatever did this had left its mark on her. When she wasn’t focusing, she would find herself skipping a foot ahead of where her foot intended on landing. If she felt even slightly threatened, she’d find herself back in her quarters, or the ladies restroom. She’d frightened quite a few janitors with that.

Ann let out a hiss under her breath; this wasn’t working. She needed, god forbid, help. _Outside_ help. The human, if she was still considered one (the lab results either haven’t come in yet or simply weren’t given to her), preferred to get assistance from the proper authorities. However, this could be a problem.

The Plumbers were a security and peace organization, first and foremost, from her knowledge. The peace and prosperity of the universe was their highest priority. Since she was an outsider, she feared that she may be exempt from their mercy, if she proved to be a threat to those goals. She was a minor, which usually afforded one some slack from any crimes accidental or otherwise. Yet every time she thought of this, memories of wikia articles on the Rooters and their experiments came to mind. The Plumbers, as prestigious as they were, were not without corruption. The fool who had hired that bunch had not been reported to have been punished, or even acknowledged…

Footsteps jolted her out of her reverie. Son of a bitch. She held her ground, though she felt her feet lift off ever so slightly. There was no way she would give up yet another hangout spot over some unusual traffic, freaky borderline involuntary powers be damned. Instead, she dashed over to one of the support beams that lined the halls, pressing her side against it. She quieted her breath, and tried to slow down her heartbeat. She had no idea if any of the officers had that good hearing, but it was best to think the worst.

The lighting was much too good to see any shadows, but she could hear the voices. She knew them quite well.

“Why are we doing this again?”

“Because, like I said before, Ben asked us to help a friend out. He’s too busy to help the newbies.”

A friend? _Oh_. Ann smiled a little hysterically at that, holding in a mad giggle. God this was almost as bad as that one time she was mistaken for a twenty-something at a hipster restaurant. She jumped when the skinny blue girl zipped right up to her,

“Found you.”

“Son of a bitch!” Ann yelped, her manic grin replaced by a strained nervous grin, “Don’t do that!”

Manny followed shortly after Helen, grinning. Holy hell he was bigger than Ann anticipated; if she had to guess, he’d probably be her dad’s height at the least. Damn it there she goes again, and the sinking ball of lead in her gut was back. Her expression must have soured, because Manny made a face that she could only assume meant worry. It is rather hard to gauge facial expressions when a person doesn’t have eyebrows.

“Ey, you okay? You’re kinda looking at me funny there.”

“It’s nothing,” Ann said quickly brushing off the thoughts with a question, “Why have you two sought me out?”

“You heard us?” Helen asked, surprised and, by the odd purple blush starting to dust her face, embarrassed. Ann couldn’t help but tilt her head a little, a curious gesture more than anything.

“Yes. I heard people approaching, then Manny conveniently asked why you were here, and you said – “

“Woah, wait, Ben didn’t say anything about you knowing our names,” Manny interjected. Once again, Ann was at a slight loss as to what he was trying to convey. Baring teeth, uppermost brow lowering… Was he angry? Or perhaps suspicious? Ann missed the days when she could just watch the damn cartoon and not worry about realism.

Meanwhile, as Ann was trying to comprehend the tetramand hybrid’s facial expressions, Helen had the sense to pacify him. She grabbed his upper arm, in both senses, and whispered harshly,

“Manny, she’s psychic or something, of course she’d know you.”

Ann giggled in disbelief, and said, “Hahaha, _no_.”

“What?” Manny and Helen said in unison. Ann laughed harder, thinking quietly, “ _Meh, I ship it_.”

“I’m not psychic, I’m observant. As to what exactly I’ve observed is classified, but I can assure you, I am not a medium. But it would be cool if I was.”

Manny looked kind of disappointed, Ann believed that, but Helen began looking at Ann more closely. Ann squirmed under her gaze; Helen had no visible pupils or irises, so trying to figure out where she was staring was about as difficult as trying to figure out somebody with sunglasses. Helen didn’t take long to notice the bulge in Ann’s pocket, obviously a rather big pair of scissors. She decided against questioning it. With how flimsy the security could be around there, Helen wouldn’t have been surprised if everyone living there would have been assigned a weapon.

“You really need to wash your hair,” Helen said, poking at Ann’s ponytail. The girl shrunk back a little at the contact, but muttered, “Can’t find the damn thing.”

Manny waved a hand in front of his face chuckling, “Is that how you smell so bad?”

“How the fuck should you know; you don’t have a nose!”

Helen bust out laughing at that, and Manny seemed to unconsciously bring a hand to the middle of his face, where his nose used to be. Ann had a feeling that maybe, just maybe, she wouldn’t get her head swashed like a watermelon by one of those hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I find the whole "No nose" alien thing a tad bit perplexing. In a cartoon, it doesn't make much of a difference; if anything it makes the expression easier to understand without that extraneous triangle sticking out of the person's face. But in real life, which is basically the way Ann sees things there, it looks kind of fishy... literally. So would the solid eyes thing.


	15. Art Break

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is an image of Ann. Drew it myself. :)


	16. Homo ?????

“These results make absolutely no sense,” Azmuth muttered, turning to face the young human, “You said she was a human.”

Ben nodded, “Yeah, she is. What, does it say something else?”

The plumbers had sent samples of Ann’s blood to a few different laboratories in Undertown in hopes of seeing if the problem was genetic. Seeing as humans amongst the likes of Cooper and Darkstar had some very strange powers, they hoped that perhaps they could pinpoint the source. Yet, when the results came back, the plumbers were stunned.

_“This DNA does not match any database on this planet.”_

_“Wrong number of chromosomes; are you sure this is human blood?”_

_“I’ve only seen such strands in beings from at least fifty light years away.”_

Ben wasn’t sure what this meant, but it couldn’t be good. If anybody could figure this out, it had to be Azmuth. Said Galvan sighed heavily, bringing the test results onto a larger screen for Ben to see, “Do you have any idea what this means, Ben?”

Ben shook his head, not getting where Azmuth was going with this, “No…”

“It confirms a decent portion of the reports from the medical personnel. Female, mammal, so on and so forth… However,”

A strand of DNA was selected and zoomed in on the screen, “This little bit is not typical in the humans we know of, including special cases like you and the Amalgams. The only time I have seen this strand before is when I was coding the Omnitrix.”

Ben straightened up, smiling with excitement, “Is she like some sort of hybrid?”

“No,” was the immediate answer, followed by the Galvan scoffing, “Her DNA is very abnormal, yes, but it only assures two things. One, she is not the same species as the humans on this planet. Two, she is at the very least the same Genus as you.”

It took Ben about two seconds to realize what that was, “Oh. So, Homo something? I’m a Homo sapiens, but what does that make her?”

Azmuth shrugged, “I don’t know, you look at the Plumbers’ protocol for single-specimen species. I’ve got work to do.”

He teleported away without another word. Ben slapped a hand to his face. Of all the times Azmuth got into his “deal with it yourself” moods, it had to be when there was an ambiguously human chick was lurking in the halls. He did not regret using the term “lurking” to describe her pacing; that is exactly what she called it herself.

His decision to let her in on the news was met with mixed results from his colleagues. Rook didn’t see the problem with it, the Amalgam kids and Kevin outright encouraged it, but Gwen warned him,

“Be careful with your wording, Ben. Ann isn’t exactly… all there.”

“She’s nuttier than squirrel…” Kevin butted in during the call, only for Ben to hear a loud smack. Gwen cleared her throat,

“Try to be helpful if she gets upset, OK? Not telling her would just make her more distrustful of you.”

He stood stiffly in front of the door of the room that had been given to Ann. In the past week, they had installed a little placard with her name on it, with a little piece of paper with the words “Do not disturb” scrawled on it in purple gel pen. He ignored the warning completely; it was two in the afternoon on a Saturday, what could she possibly be doing?

The door opened with a whoosh, but the girl at the laptop didn’t seem to notice. Ben noted the earphones plugged into her head, and stopped dead when he saw what was on the screen. He called to her from the doorway, averting his eyes,

“Uh, Annie.”

She jumped a mile high, slamming the computer shut, and ripped the headphones from her ears. She whirled towards Ben angrily,

“What the fuck, dude? Does nobody on this planet knock either?”

Ben raised his hands, placating, “Hey, you had your headphones in.” He decided not to mention that he indeed forgot to knock. “I’ve got some news you might want to hear.”

“They’re kicking me out?”

“What, no. We still haven’t figured that out yet.”

“ _They_ haven’t figured it out; _you_ have just been snooping around the latest weird thing that happens to be my business.”

“Look, dude,” Ben sighed, gripping the bridge of his nose, “I’ve got some news, do you want to hear it or not?”

Ann sighed, leaning back in the rolling chair, “Fine, fire away.”

Ben took a moment to try and word it out right, “You’re… not a human.”

Ann raised an eyebrow skeptically, and said, “I think I would know if I was a human, Ben.”

“No, I mean…” Ben cut himself off, trying to get it right, “You’re close, but you’re not the type of humans from around here – “

Ann held up a hand and cut him off, “So, I’m a different species? Why didn’t you say so?”

“Do I look like I get my Biology homework in on time?”

“Dude, am I at the very least the same Genus. It’d be weird if I wasn’t.”

“Azmuth said something along those lines.”

“So what am I?” Ann said, face screwing up in frustration and confusion, “’Homo _other_?’ ‘Homo _sexual_?’ What the _fuck_?”

It wasn’t so much that Ann was distressed – she had guessed that there are probably some major differences between both her world’s humans and the ones in this world – so much of the fact that she wasn’t any closer to getting out than she was before. Her contemplations kept getting interrupted by her new “friends,” she supposed. Now that it was confirmed that they were different enough to constitute separate species, perhaps there was something worth looking into this.

“Did he give you any more info?” Ann asked, “Preferably something I can work with?”

“No,” Ben admitted, “Azmuth isn’t exactly very helpful unless it’s either wrecking his workplace or the universe.”

Ann laughed bitterly, “Of course not.”

She clapped her two hands together once and got up from her seat, “Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get back to my studies. Come back when there’s something I can actually work with.” She waved her hands in a shooing motion, “Out!”

Ben was taken aback, “Hey, wait, what was that on your screen?”

“Tendon replacement surgery, numbnuts,” she said, her brows furrowing, “Now out!”


	17. Message

Dear readers,

Apologies to anyone expecting another chapter, but I'm afraid I'll have to discontinue this story. It's getting a little too personal, and quite frankly, I'm not going to have the time or energy to finish this the way it is now. School's coming up, and I would like to focus on things that don't stress me out to merely write. In case anyone has forgotten, this is a self insert fic. Whilst she isn't a carbon copy (nobody can write themselves that good), Ann is very much based on myself and I've gotten to the point where going any further would probably require me going to a therapist, because I have no idea how to continue otherwise without it spiraling out of control, and shortly following my IRL health.

I hope you understand.

\- Dark Auto

**Author's Note:**

> Another thing to mind, while you're reading this, is the fact that this is how I see myself reacting to this environment. I'm not a very happy-go-lucky person, and at my worst I'm a major pessimist. If you want to judge the character, you're not judging me so much as you're judging how I see myself at my worst. I can understand it if you don't like her; I can be kind of an insufferable bitch like any other human on this planet. There is not a single person who can claim to be perfect angels their entire lives and not be spewing bullshit out their faceholes.  
> With that in mind, I hope you all have decent days and restful nights!  
> ~Dark Auto


End file.
